Wachovia Apologizes For Locking Old Man In Bank

Robyn submitted a complaint on the Wachovia website about Monday’s unfortunate incident. This was their swift response:

“Dear Robyn,

Thank you for contacting Wachovia.

This message is in response to your recent communication, which was received on 09/12/2006 and assigned Case ID 12581485.

Please accept my apology for the treatment received by the elderly person in our Liberty Financial Center and the embarrassment to you. Thank you for bringing this situation to our attention.

Your comments have been forwarded to our customer advocate group, and appropriate action will be taken.

Thank you for taking the time to send us your comments.

Sincerely,

Arnold L”

The idealist in us thinks now the manager will get spanked on his heiney. Smack! Smack! The cynic thinks that inside Wachovia HQ, there’s a circular filing bin with “Customer Advocate Group” stenciled on it.

I mailed a more formal letter to the CEO’s office in the hopes of reaching someone with a full last name. Now my husband keeps saying “Hey, I’m thinking of writing a strongly-worded letter”…maybe he’ll buy me a Consumerist t-shirt for xmas or something.

Glad you got a response so quickly, Robyns. You could reply to that e-mail with a link to your posts here: banks are super concerned about their public image. When I worked at First Union, there were a few instances of major internal theft that the bank didn’t prosecute because it didn’t want the bad publicity (impacted accounts were reimbursed).